The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX - lshort.pdf

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• Today, four TEX engines are actively maintained: the original TEX, pdfTEX , XƎTEX and LuaTEX . This book recommends using either XƎTEX or LuaTEX . The examples presented should produce the same results on both engines (except where otherwise noted). The basic examples will work with pdfTEX2 too, but we suggest to switch to XƎTEX or LuaTEX from the start, to avoid complications down the road as you explore more advanced concepts.

• As you will see, these characters can be used in your documents all the same by using a prefix backslash: \# \$ \% \^{} \& \_ \{ \} \~{} \textbackslash{}

• The backslash character \ can not be entered by adding another backslash in front of it (\\); this sequence is used for line breaking. Use the \textbackslash command instead.

• Commands that do not take any parameters still ignore any spaces after them. The easiest way to stop this behaviour, is to follow them by an empty group.

• article for articles in scientific journals, short reports, and any other short document. proc a class for proceedings based on the article class. report for longer reports. containing several chapters, small books, PhD theses, ... book for real books. beamer for presentations. letter for letters.

• It stands for “emphasise” and does just that: it emphasises the 〈text〉 it received as a parameter.

• amsmath [55] Provides additional commands for typesetting mathe- matical symbols, and environments for aligning equa- tions. Described in Chapter 3. polyglossia [15] Makes it easy to write LATEX documents in languages other than English, or even in multiple languages. De- scribed in Section 2.8. booktabs [17] Provides commands for producing beautifully format- ted tables for your document. Described in Sec- tion 2.18. biblatex [44] Provides commands for automatically specifying and producing a bibliography for your document. De- scribed in Chapter 4. makeidx [76] Provides commands for producing indexes. Described in Section 5.1. fancyhdr [50] Let’s you easily customise page headers and footers. Described in Section 7.7. beamer [74] Provides a document class that changes output to pro- duce presentations and provides command to typeset slides. Described in Section 5.4

• \\[〈length〉] or \newline starts a new line without starting a new paragraph.